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A pocket breathalyzer could help figure out the foods that make you sick

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Courtesy of FoodMarble

When Aonghus Shortt moved in with his girlfriend, Grace, he began to see just how uncomfortable and emotionally distressing her symptoms associated with irritable bowel syndrome were.

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"I'm an engineer so I started doing what engineers do best. I listened and I empathized," he said on stage at a demo day for HAX, the world's largest hardware accelerator. Long pause.

"No, I'm just kidding. I got started on a solution!" Shortt laughed.

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Aonghus Shortt developed a personal digestive tracker to help people, like his girlfriend Grace, who suffer from digestive discomfort. Courtesy of FoodMarble

Shortt set out to build a product that would help his girlfriend and others suffering from digestive issues identify the foods they should avoid to feel their best.

The fruits of his company FoodMarble's labor is Aire, an iPod-sized device that — according to Shortt — can use a technique called hydrogen breath testing to determine people's levels of intolerance to different foods. Hydrogen gas forms in the colon during digestion and then enters the bloodstream and the lungs, giving gastroenterologists limited information on correlation between the food you eat and the discomfort you feel.

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The user blows into the device before eating, say, a food containing lactose or fructose, and takes two more tests 15 minutes and 30 minutes after consumption. Aire measures the composition of the breath and benchmarks the hydrogen concentration against a standard reading.

The device sends the data to the user's phone app via Bluetooth and makes a recommendation about their level of tolerance for a given food.

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Courtesy of FoodMarble

Shortt is quick to clarify that Aire isn't tool for self-diagnosis. "The doctor might give them some dietary advice and then they're on their own," he says. "We want to be the support that comes right after they get that news."

Some people diagnosed as lactose intolerant, for example, may be able to tolerate a low-lactose diet that includes up to 10 grams of lactose per day. But it's hard to know how much that is in practical terms and what foods are more lactose-heavy than others.

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By tracking consumption in a food diary baked into the Aire app and using the breathalyzer, Shortt expects users to be able to get a comprehensive look at what settles well in their stomachs and what sends them running for the bathroom.

He hopes future iterations of Aire allow the user to easily share their results with a doctor. Users may also be able to one day share recipes that are low in a certain additive, benefitting those who are embarrassed to come out as IBS sufferers.

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Courtesy of FoodMarble

The startup conducted a user trial, but has not published the results in any peer-reviewed publication. The next step is to compare the device's accuracy against a hospital-grade hydrogen breathalyzer.

James Brief, a pediatric gastroenterologist and chief medical office of FoodMarble, sees potential in the device. In his office, he uses an old-school version of Aire that requires the patient to fast before testing and submit to breath tests every 15 minutes for up to three hours after eating the food they think bothers their digestive system.

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"The devices in the hospital are the size of a microwave," Brief tells me at the recent HAX demo day. Plus, they cost $25,000 each and as such, are only really available in hospitals.

The company is also working on bringing a second edition of the product to the US Food and Drug Administration for approval as a medical device. That passing grade will allow it to start pitching the device for use in hospitals.

But FoodMarble has a ways to go in proving the device's effectiveness, and hydrogen breath testing is highly unreliable in general.

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

Though the tests are easy and safe to perform, a number of studies have found that they present a high yield of false-positive and false-negative results, according to a 2006 review from Sweden's Sahlgrenska University Hospital published in the journal Gut. (More recent studies, including one from February 2016, have concluded the same.)

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Plus, the 2006 review says there's little evidence to suggest the bacteria measured in the breath is indicative of gastrointestinal disorders. The paper ends on a hopeful note, recommending that breath tests be paired with other techniques in the future for more reliable results.

As innovation in hardware soars, the sensors in devices shrink, making them portable and cheaper to produce. Aire will cost Kickstarter backers $99 when it ships in 2017 (if all goes as planned).

FoodMarble's crowdfunding campaign launches September 6.

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